The Relevance and Presumed Innocence of Learning: A Reply to Soeters and Talbot and Fischer

Abstract

Responding to Soeters and Talbot and Fischer, we clarify our position that learning in military organizations is highly contingent on established organizational frameworks, vocabularies, and understandings and constrained by existing power relations. The danger present in military operations increases the importance of minimizing internal frictions and constrains local experimentation and the application of different solutions. Thus, while there is learning in military organizations, the latter are less prone than large, civilian organizations to venture into the use of new and unproven solutions. The present debate about learning in military organization reflects the different basic assumptions about formal organizations in management studies as opposed to the field of organizational sociology.